How the Bureaucracy Lost its Builders
Why midcentury "modernization" reorganized expertise out of existence.
Today’s federal agencies face a broad loss of confidence in their claims to expertise. A century ago, federal agencies also operated amid intense populist distrust, yet were run by scientists and engineers who served across administrations. My new article examines how early agencies’ organization made expertise credible and how midcentury reforms eroded that credibility. I lay out the full history in Personnel is Policy: The Fabric of Government Organization, recently published in American Affairs.
A true banger